Interlude
by Veszelyite
Summary: [Clover] After traveling a long way, Lan meets someone from his past.


Interlude

A Clover one-shot

by Veszelyite

A/N: This is an old, previously unfinished piece of fanfic, pulled off the shelf a few weeks ago and dusted off in the hopes of getting some creative inspiration going again. It was originally written to overlap with the end of another story, 'Icosahedron'. It contains spoilers for that fic, as well as for Clover 4, and Clover 2. Anyone interested in reading 'Icosahedron' or its sequel fic, 'Iris' can find them on the author's CLAMP fanfic website.

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DISCLAIMER: The characters of Clover belong to CLAMP and their associates. If they ever get around to producing a tankouban 5, it will make me incredibly happy--but until then, fanfic remains the next-best thing.

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The landscape was empty. No, more than empty, it was a void, a formless black nothing that stretched off into the distance with no road and no landmarks, and not another soul in sight. Such limitless perfection was never meant to exist in waking life, and so Lan became aware that he was dreaming.

Still dreaming. After the nightmares that had plagued him just a short time before--dreams filled with noise and chaos and disjointed images of unpleasant times and places, it came as something of a relief to have settled here instead. The blank nothing was infinitely better, a haven of calm where the Three-leaf could be alone and rest, if only for a little while.

The marble-like black floor upon which he sat seemed to be the only tangible object in existence. Except.... Lan became aware that his back was resting up against a hard, flat surface as well. When he turned his head to look, he found that he was sitting in front of a plain, rectangular mirror. He rose to his feet. The mirror was narrow and very tall, well over twice Lan's height. He reached out to touch it, and encountered, as he had expected, a solid surface of smooth, flawless glass.

What he didn't expect, however, was that the image on the other side of the mirror would suddenly tilt its head to the side and speak.

"Hello, C," the image said, in Lan's own voice.

Lan breath caught in his throat, and he snatched his right hand back from the glass. He had let down his guard because he had thought that it was safe here. But he realized that the quiet of this place must be a ruse. It was just another nightmare, after all.

His reflection's expression was calm, and its left hand remained resting against the other side of the mirror. Into the silence that followed, it murmured, "I've missed you. Brother."

With effort, Lan forced himself to relax. The fact that his twin was here did not surprise him. A often haunted his sleep. What surprised him was the form that A was using...Lan's mirror image. His younger brother had not been his mirror image for quite some time. The walls of the research institute should have protected A from that curse, from the touch of unnatural aging that had changed Lan's appearance so much in the last two years. A should still have looked like a teenager, round-faced and wide-eyed. He shouldn't have had that added span of height, that older face, or the first few strands of gray hair.

His brother raised an eyebrow, his expression inquiring and amazingly pleasant. "You don't recognize me, do you?" He smiled a little wryly. "I guess two years really is too long to be apart."

Lan felt a chill. That expression and those words were completely wrong. This wasn't A at all. He stopped simply looking at the person who faced him and began to actually see him. The image had the same black jeans and T-shirt, the same features, the same unruly black hair that Lan himself did. But he stood with a relaxed and easy stance, a self-assured and almost cocky set to his shoulders and chin. The open smile he wore lacked any trace of a possessive edge. Lan knew that smile was the more dangerous because of it.

"B," he whispered.

He saw a hint of smugness touch that cheerful expression. "You remembered," B said. "I knew you would. Even after all this time, I knew you wouldn't be able to forget about me." His head tilted slightly to the side, his expression intent and almost sly. "Have you missed me?"

Lan stared at him, unable to answer. _B._ His other younger brother. The one that A had killed two years ago. Lan's hand went out, grasping the edge of the mirror frame for support. His chest felt tight, full of emotions too complicated and numerous to name. All except for the strongest one. Guilt. Lan closed his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said.

He had always carried with him his own share of the blame for B's death. A had hardly bothered to hide his resentment and hostility, or his ability to switch from a bad mood to a violent one in a single heartbeat. Despite that, Lan had always chosen to believe that A would never be capable of murder, no matter what B did to provoke him. It had been a comfortable belief, and a safe one.

It had blinded him.

He had felt B's murder from a few rooms away. The triplets were bound together irrevocably through the magic they shared...irrevocably until death. Lan knew the full meaning of that the moment he ceased to sense B's existence.

He ran, feeling A's triumph resound in his head--knowing it was already too late. As he skidded to a halt in the doorway of the large circular room, A had turned to him, looking away from the sprawled body that was now nothing more than a silent, empty shell.

"He never listened to me," A had observed casually, as if those simple words were a justification for everything. "He should have." He smiled and held out blood-stained hands towards his oldest sibling. "I did it for you, C. Now you'll be able to love only me."

Lan shuddered away from that memory, unable to bring himself to look up, to face the brother that he had failed to save. _I wasn't there when you needed me. I couldn't do anything at all, until afterwards--and even then, all I could do was run away so that it would never happen again._

"Brother," B said gently, causing Lan to open his eyes. Both of B's hands were against the glass. "It's already done. There's nothing you can do about it now."

Lan raised his hands to the surface of the mirror, placing them opposite B's. The glass was cool beneath his palms, and perfectly smooth. "I'm sorry," he repeated. He said the words as if by saying them, he would be able to make things right. As if, by being sorry, he could bring his brother back. "I'm sorry."

"I know you are," B murmured. "I forgive you."

The glass was warming slightly. It seemed to ripple beneath the surface of Lan's palms. Almost, Lan thought he could feel his brother's touch, could sense the warm fingers curving around his own, to draw him through the mirror into his brother's comforting embrace.

That thought jolted him, and he jerked back from the glass. As B looked at him in surprise and hurt, Lan spoke simply and without accusation, "You weren't going to tell me, were you? That if I crossed that threshold, it might be difficult for me to get back."

The hurt on B's face was quickly replaced by something that looked almost like sympathy. "You don't understand yet," he said. "But you will very soon."

"B," Lan said, his own voice gentle now, "what do you want?" B never acted unless he had something to gain. Unlike A, who had always gotten what he wanted by threats and by force, B had always relied on his charm and his ability to manipulate others. The Clover Project scientists would probably never resolve that paradox, that three boys who were completely identical in appearance, intelligence, and power had become so different in personality. But perhaps the Project psychologists had already determined that the cause really wasn't all that complicated. It had simply been a matter of survival. In the cold and sterile halls of the research institute, where caring faces were few and far between, each of the triplets had developed his own strategy for scrounging affection and attention from their caretakers and each other.

"I wanted to see you again," B answered quietly. "Is that so hard to believe?"

His answer held a note of truth. B never lied when the truth served just as well. Realization touched Lan then, and he studied his brother a moment longer before he spoke again. "It's really you, isn't it," he said. "You're not just part of my dream."

B nodded slowly. His expression had become a little sad. "Yes," he said, "it's really me."

The words were a catalyst for memory, for all the things that Lan had been trying desperately to block out before he had come to this place. He remembered illness and fever, unbearable heat and bone-shaking cold, numbness and deafness and bouts of blurred vision followed by darkness. He remembered gentle hands, Gingetsu's hands, holding him steady as he thrashed his way out of countless fits of nightmare-laden delirium--and holding him again later on, as the heavy weight of exhaustion wrapped all of his limbs and made the slightest movement unthinkable and impossible. He drew in a shaky breath. "Then...then I'm...."

"Ah," B said. "Now you understand."

_No._

B set his hands against his side of the mirror and pressed against it. The surface bowed out a little, towards Lan. "You'll be coming here soon, after all." He met Lan's eyes. "When it's time, this won't be a barrier any more."

_No._ Lan repeated desperately. It couldn't be true. _Not now. It's not fair._ Part of him wanted to laugh bitterly at that thought. Fair? Had anything in his entire, short life ever been fair? The other part of him wanted to curl up in a little ball of hurt and grief and loss, and cry. _Gingetsu._ He closed his eyes against that sudden, rending pain. "I was supposed to have two or three more years," he murmured to himself. "I was prepared to grow old early and die in my sleep, as long as I could be with him for that small amount of time." His throat closed over further words. It was only within the silence of his own thoughts that he could contemplate how harsh and ironic Fate was, to offer him so little, and then take even that away.

"So that's it," B said suddenly. "I had wondered why the barrier was here. Two years ago you never would have had such a strong will to live." His expression filled with concern. "Please stop fighting, C. You're only making things harder on yourself."

"I can't," Lan answered. But the words sounded tired, sounded empty. Now that he realized what this was, where he was, escape seemed impossible. There was no way out. Except through the mirror. _But I can't leave Gingetsu._

"It's useless." B shook his head. "Forget the Two-leaf. He can't keep you away from this place, or from me." Again B pressed his hand against the glass. Again it bowed out, and this time the prints of individual fingertips could be seen. "You'll like it here, C," he said. "I'm sure you'll be happy."

Against his will, as if in a trance, Lan touched the surface of the mirror. It was radiating heat now, the warmth from his brother's hands. The glass surface rippled and thinned.

Then Lan heard music.

It was faint noise at first, barely a snatch of melody. But as he listened, it grew louder and clearer. A single voice singing alone, without accompaniment, relying only on the perfection of its own sound. Lan knew the tune. And the singer.

I want happiness

I seek happiness

to cause your happiness,

to be your happiness.

B looked up. "That music," he said. He didn't sound happy.

"It's Suu." Lan should have known. "Then she's here, too."

B scowled at him. No, not at him, but out into the blackness on Lan's side of the mirror. "It isn't coming from here. You didn't know, did you? ...That she was alive." His expression darkened further, and his hands unconsciously clenched into fists. "Why?" he demanded, for one moment sounding more like A than himself. "Why would she come here for you?"

Lan looked away from him, out into the void. He saw nothing, no movement or change in the lightless expanse that surrounded him. But still, the music grew louder.

"You're going to leave me alone again, aren't you?"

There was a flat, hollow note to those words. It caused Lan to turn back to his brother immediately. But B's face was shuttered, his head bowed so that his dark bangs covered his eyes. "B," Lan said.

"I'm tired of being here all by myself." The words were so soft, Lan had to struggle to hear them. His brother raised his head, and there were tears standing in his eyes. Lan knew that the tears weren't real. But the fear in B's voice was. "I don't want to be alone any more." B looked away from him, and the fingers of his right hand trailed across the glass one last time, as if with longing. When he spoke again, his voice was resigned. "There's no force in the world that can stand between a Four-leaf Clover and anything she wants. Her magic's very strong. You'd better go before she rips this whole place apart looking for you."

Not your past

but your present is what I seek

carefully winding back its fragile thread

The music drew B's gaze back to the other side of the mirror again. He looked intently off into the darkness beyond Lan for a moment, then his expression softened grudgingly as he added, "There's something else, another reason she's here. To give you a gift."

"A gift?"

B nodded. "The most precious gift anybody can give." The surface of the mirror rippled again, blurring the image on the other side, making B's expression and his outline grow more obscure. "The gift of time."

Lan felt a sharp stab of panic. "B, wait!"

"Don't worry," he heard his brother say, as his image vanished entirely behind the surface of shimmering glass. "I'll be patient." His voice was fading away, drowned out by the song. "...Because I know that we'll meet here again someday."

The blackness around Lan began to dissolve into a bright starburst of scintilating light, the same intense display that filled one's vision when being caught up in a Transfer. One could become lost in all that light, lost in the beautiful soaring melody that accompanied it.

Lan closed his eyes and let it carry him away.

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A faint beeping noise was coming from somewhere very far off. It intruded into the hush of silent darkness, spreading thin tendrils of awareness in its wake. The noise was insidiously persistent. Even the total exhaustion of both mind and body was not enough to keep it at bay. Eventually it became enough of a nuisance to cause Lan to drag open his eyes.

He was enfolded in clean white linen sheets, completely surrounded by rings of unfamiliar electronic equipment that radiated outward from his bedside. Beyond the metal boxes and the piles of wire were the austure white walls of a room that Lan had never seen before in his life. A blue curtain stretched from floor to ceiling on one side of him, partially obscuring the white door. On the other side of him was a window. Lan frowned, squinting past the edge of the bed, past the heart monitor that beeped in time to his pulse. A familiar outline was silhouetted against that long rectangle of light.

"Kazu..." he whispered--and was vaguely surprised to realize that he didn't even have enough breath in his lungs to say the man's full name. The small sound had the desired effect, however. Kazuhiko glanced back over his shoulder, then turned aside from the window as he realized that Lan was awake.

"Well," he said, coming close enough that Lan could see his disapproving frown. "It figures you'd wake up now. Gingetsu's gonna kill me. I made him go get coffee." When Lan simply looked at him in confusion, the severity in Kazuhiko's expression faded, and he added gruffly, "I think it's the first time he's stirred from your bedside in three days."

_Oh._ Lan thought, as the words sank in. He wondered if he should feel guilty for bad timing. At the moment, guilt was the furthest thing from his mind. He was much more concerned with seeing Gingetsu again, as soon as possible. For some reason Lan missed him terribly, as if he had gone someplace very far away.

"How do you feel?" Kazuhiko asked.

Lan had to think about it for a long moment. "Tired," he managed finally.

"You got pretty sick. The doctors weren't sure you were going to make it."

Lan remembered something about a fever. It had made him have the strangest dreams. About polyhedrons and black emptiness and mirrors. And singing.

"Suu," he murmured.

Something in Kazuhiko's eyes sobered and turned inward. "Yeah," he said. "Gingetsu told me she was here."

There was private pain in that expression, though the older man did his best to hide it. Lan felt a worried frown crease his forehead. Kazuhiko noticed, and awkwardly patted at Lan's shoulder. "I'll be here for a while," he said. "You should get some rest."

It sounded like good advice. Lan really was so very tired. _Just for a moment_, he promised himself, as he felt drowsiness start to take him. _I'll wake up again as soon as Gingetsu comes back._

He slept deeply and peacefully...and for the first time in days, he did not dream.


End file.
